52.5 

'  _ : _ 

Public  Property  in 
Private  Hands 


3<ri.  i 


CARTER  H.  HARRISON 

MAYOR  OF  CHICAGO 


PUBLISHED  BY  PERMISSION  OF  THE  PHILADELPHIA  SATUR¬ 
DAY  EVENING  POST  ::  COPYRIGHTED  1902,  BY  THE  CURTIS 

PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

CLOMESEY  A  CO.,  PRINTERS,  84  TO  98  FIFTH  AV£ 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 

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UNI 


Public  Property 

- IN  - 

Private  Hands 

By  CARTER  H.  HARRISON,  Mayor  of  Chicago 


Published  by  Permission  of  the  Philadelphia 
Saturday  Evening  Post.  Copyrighted 
1902,  by  the  Curtis  Publishing  Company 


CCOHESEY  &  COMPANY 


p 


1 


-  Printers 
0  O 


s 

\ 


By  Mayor  Harrison. 


.  Twenty  years  ago  municipal  ownership  of  public  utilities  was 
commonly  regarded  as  a  chimera,  as  the  impractical  and  fanciful 
dream  of  the  socialist  and  theorist.  Then  it  was  looked  upon  as  a 
visionary  scheme,  pretty  and  attractive  in  theory,  but  too  vague  and 
elusive  to  stand  the  test  of  actual  practice.  To-day  it  is  a  practical, 
definite  business  proposition,  appealing  forcefully  to  each  citizen 
whose  judgment  is  unbiased  by  ownership  of  stocks,  bonds  and  other 
securities,  or  whose  personality  is  unaffected  by  the  hypnotic  influence 
of  such  interests,  as  the  one  common-sense  method  of  handling  in  the 
not  distant  future  a  vexatious  problem. 

The  owner  of  blocks  of  stocks  and  bonds  and  the  speculator  in 
market  securities  still  sees,  or  fancies  he  sees,  or,  as  is  much  to  the 
same  purpose,  claims  he  sees,  in  municipal  ownership  what  with  jaun¬ 
diced  judgment  he  is  pleased  to  term  a  phase  of  anarchy. 

Four  years  of  experience  in  public  life  have  taught  me  a  full 
appreciation  of  the  many  ways  in  which  the  public  spoliator  finds  it 
possible  to  apply  this  elastic  term  of  anarchy.  Every  effort  to  give 
fair  treatment  and  justice  to  the  plain  every-day  citizen,  if  it  touch 
the  wallet  of  the  financier,  is  at  once  dubbed  anarchy,  and  the  inno¬ 
cent-minded,  whose  condition  the  effort  has  been  made  to  improve, 
is  asked  to  condemn  it  as  such.  For  generations  the  guileless  public 
has  made  a  handful  of  its  fellows  the  beneficiaries  of  franchises  to  use 
public  property  for  private  gain,  either  altogether  without  reciprocal 
obligation  or  with  obligations  quite  incommensurate  to  the  advan¬ 
tages  they  have  enjoyed. 

These  franchises  for  many  years  have  been  exercised  without  a 
word  of  protest.  For  so  long  has  the  use  of  public  property  for  pri¬ 
vate  gain  been  enjoyed  as  no  more  and  no  less  than  a  rightful  per¬ 
sonal  advantage  that  at  length  the  franchise  holder  has  come  to  look 
upon  his  title  as  the  king  or  emperor  looks  upon  his  right  to  rule.  To 
his  seeming  way  of  thinking  the  title  sprang  originally,  not  from  the 
heedlessness  of  the  public,  but  from  a  species  of  divine  origin;  and 


P  3 e 1  3d 


■opposition  smacks  almost  of  blasphemy.  Kings  and  emperors  rule 
Dei  gratia ;  by  a  kindred  grace  of  God  the  street-railway  magnate, 
the  gas  magnate,  the  telephone  magnate,  the  electricity  magnate  and 
all  the  other  magnates  would  seem  to  claim  their  public  grants. 

These  grants  have  been  held  some  for  decades,  some  for  gener¬ 
ations.  They  have  become  the  patents  of  nobility  of  our  American 
moneyed  aristocracy.  To-day  it  has  come  to  a  pass  when,  according 
to  the  lights  of  many,  to  deny  in  words  their  justice  is  dubbed  incit¬ 
ing  the  people  to  riot;  to  deny  in  act  is  to  raise  the  red  torch  and  to 
wave  the  red  flag  of  anarchy.  For  years  the  whole  public  had  ac¬ 
cepted  these  conditions  without  a  murmur.  The  patience  of  the  public 
and  especially  the  American  public,  it  may  be  said  paranthetically,  is 
so  long  and  so  enduring  as  to  merit  being  turned  into  a  proverb.  The 
explanation,  if  any  be  needed,  may  be  found  in  this,  that  these  fran¬ 
chises  have  been  held  by  the  first  citizens  of  each  community;  their 
general  reputation  for  uprightness  and  fair  dealing  has  served  as  a 
cloak  behind  which  the  schemer  and  the  promoter  have  worked  se¬ 
cretly,  industriously  and  in  perfect  security. 

THE  SYSTEM  ALREADY  TESTED  ABROAD. 

Gradually  word  came  to  the  ears  of  the  plain  citizen  of  this 
country  that  in  the  cities  of  Great  Britain  and  of  the  Continent  pub¬ 
lic  ownership  was  not  looked  upon  as  a  dream,  nor  were  its  advocates 
denounced  as  enemies  of  organized  society.  The  Anglomania  of  the 
rich,  the  aping  by  the  franchise-holding  coterie  of  the  dress,  the 
manners,  the  ideas  of  the  little  tight  isle,  the  marriages  of  its  daugh¬ 
ters  to  the  scions  of  English  families,  the  rush  of  many  of  its  mem¬ 
bers  for  homes  among  and  companionship  with  England’s  people, 
might  have  served  as  excusable  incentives  to  the  every-day  citizen  to 
practice  a  little  Anglomania  in  public  ownership  on  his  own  part,  if 
any  incentive,  other  than  the  beneficial  results  to  be  obtained,  were 
needed. 

He  learned  that  in  the  capitals  of  Europe,  where  advanced  mu¬ 
nicipal  thought  favored  public  ownership,  practical  business  sense 
■was  putting  it  into  operation.  He  found  it  not  only  considered 
right  in  theory,  but  actually  working  well  in  practice.  The 
more  he  studied  the  question  the  more  favorably  he  came  to  look  upon 


5 


it.  He  weighed  the  arguments  in  its  favor  and  found  them  convinc¬ 
ing;  he  analyzed  the  arguments  against  it  and  found  them  false  and 
misleading.  As  a  result  of  his  studies  and  observations  the  thoughtful 
citizen  of  to-day  looks  to  municipal  ownership  as  the  certain  ultimate 
method  of  handling  practically  and  sensibly  the  public  utilities  of  a 
municipality. 

The  claim  that  the  theory  under  discussion  is  a  species  of  anarchy 
is  too  absurd  to  demand  more  than  cursory  mention.  A  single  state¬ 
ment  should  suffice  to  explode  so  threadbare  an  argument.  Glasgow 
is  not  an  anarchistic  city  nor  is  the  canny  Scot  in  general  considered 
either  wildeyed  or  visionary.  By  common  consent  he  is  adjudged  a 
shrewd,  level-headed  man,  with  more  of  logic  in  his  mental  make-up 
than  of  poetry — though  he  lacks  not  the  latter — and  with  a  greater 
love  for  the  dollar  than  for  unproductive,  though  rosy  tinted,  dreams. 
In  Glasgow  public  ownership  has  advanced  to  the  stage  where  the  city 
owns  and  operates,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  user  as  well  as  to  the 
profit  of  the  municipality,  not  only  the  water  system,  but  the  street 
cars,  the  gas  works  and  the  telephone  system.  Yet  it  has  not  so  far 
been  claimed,  even  in  the  most  ultra  of  financial  circles,  that  the  me¬ 
tropolis  of  the  Land  of  the  Heather  is  flying  the  red  flag  of  anarchy. 
Investigation  rather  develops  the  information  that  the  rates  charged 
to  the  public  for  the  service  are  low,  while  the  profits  to  the  public  re¬ 
sulting  from  public  operation  are  so  great  that  taxes  have  reached 
their  low-water  mark. 

Greater  force  is  found  in  the  argument  that  public  ownership 
would  result  in  a  standing  army  of  city  employees  who,  because  of 
the  method  of  their  appointment,  would  prove  unsatisfactory  ser¬ 
vants,  and  who,  on  account  of  their  number,  would  control  city 
elections. 

These  are  queer  arguments,  however,  to  be  propounded  by  the 
beneficiaries  of  the  present  system  of  public  franchise  grants.  No 
greater  number  of  employees  would  be  employed  by  any  given  utility, 
operated  under  public  ownership,  than  is  employed  to-day  under  pri¬ 
vate  ownership.  This  is,  or  at  least  it  would  seem  to  be,  a  self-evident 
proposition.  Nor  would  the  taking  of  a  utility  under  public  owner- 


6 


ship  put  its  employees  in  politics  to  any  greater  extent  than  they  are 
to-day.  This  is  a  self-evident  proposition,  to  the  initiated  at  least. 

Patronage  has  been  dubbed  the  curse  of  politics.  It  is  certainly 
the  bane  of  the  average  politician.  When  a  political  victory  has  been 
won  by  an  alderman  or  a  councilman  he  is  at  once  beset  by  the  hun¬ 
gry  faithful  for  a  share  of  the  spoils  of  war.  There  are  many  more 
applicants  for  the  jobs  in  the  municipal  gift  than  there  are  jobs  to  be 
given.  The  alderman-elect  is  suppoosed  to  be  in  favor  with  the  pub¬ 
lic-service  corpoorations  because  of  favors  to  be  asked  and  favors  to 
be  granted.  The  corporations  are  anxious  to  serve  the  new  official — 
and,  incidentally,  to  place  him  under  obligations.  The  faithful  polit¬ 
ical  worker  is  persistent  in  his  appeals  for  what  he  and  his  friends  call 
“recognition."  Recognition,  in  the  political  dictionary,  means  a  tan¬ 
gible  reward  for  work  done — in  other  words,  a  job.  A  call  or  two 
at  the  general  offices  of  the  corporation,  a  letter  or  two,  and  for  the 
new  official  a  troublesome  visitor  has  been  disposed  of. 

PERNICIOUS  ACTIVITY  OF  SOME  CORPORATIONS. 

Nor  is  it  only  in  the  method  of  their  appointment  that  employees 
of  public-service  corporations  may  be  said  to  be  in  politics.  Common 
report  asserts  that  not  infrequently  these  corporations  become  very 
busy  about  election  time.  The  charge  has  been  made  in  Chicago,  for 

instance,  that  a  certain  election  has  been  won  or  lost  bv  what  is  called 
“the  car-barn  vote.”  From  the  very  nature  of  things  public-service 

corporations  have  both  friends  to  assist  and  enemies  to  punish.  Cor¬ 
porations  may  have  no  souls,  but  their  managers  at  times  have  very 
long  memories,  marvelous  faculties  for  harboring  a  grudge,  and  very 
long  knives  to  sheathe  in  the  backs  of  those  who  have  stood  in  their 
way.  Municipal  elections  are  in  these  days  expensive  affairs,  and  cor¬ 
porations,  it  is  said,  frequently  find  it  to  their  interest  to  make  large 
donations  of  funds  to  the  side  in  which  they  are  interested. 

I  have  known  of  several  local  elections  in  which  word  has  gone 
forth  from  certain  corporation  offices  that  one  ticket  should  receive 
the  support  of  its  employees  and  that  another  ticket  should  be  knifed. 
A  barn-boss  has  been  accused  of  sending  for  the  employees  to  tell 
them  what  the  company  expected.  The  employees  have  been  handed 
lithographs  which  they  were  ordered  to  place  in  their  windows  and 


7 


buttons  which  they  were  ordered  to  wear  on  the  lapels  of  their  coats. 
They  have  been  told  their  prosperity  hangs  upon  the  outcome  of  the 
election,  and  they  have  been  advised  in  no  uncertain  manner  on  which 
side  of  the  slice  of  bread  the  street-car  butter  was  spread. 

In  short,  the  employees  of  the  companies  enjoying  public  grants 
are  as  much  in  politics  to-day  and  are  as  dominant  political  factors  as 
could  possibly  be  the  employees  of  a  municipally  operated  utility,  even 
were  the  latter  to  be  appointed  under  the  old-time  spoils  system.  I 
have  always  held  that  the  prerequisite  of  municipal  ownership  of  any 
utility  was  a  fast,  firm,  rigid  civil-service  system  under  which  men 
were  selected  for  their  merit,  retained  for  their  good  behavior  and 
advanced  for  their  ability.  If  merit  be  the  test  for  original  appoint¬ 
ment  and  ability,  as  well  as  faithful  service  the  measure  of  after-ad¬ 
vancement  in  the  service,  the  employees  under  municipal  domination 
would  have  but  little  time  to  do  more  than  to  exercise  their  right  of 
citizenship :  to  vote. 

To  those  who  fear  municipal  operation  and  its  fancied  dangers 
the  advocate  thereof  comes  with  reassuring  words.  It  is  both 
possible  and  practicable  to  have  ownership  of  utilities  without  oper¬ 
ation  of  them.  Take  the  street-car  utility  as  an  example.  A  city  may 
reserve  to  itself  the  ownership  of  rights-of-way  and  lay  the  rails  along 
them,  and  then  lease  to  the  highest  bidder  at  public  auctions  held  at 
stated  intervals  the  right  to  operate  upon  those  rails  tramway  cars 
subject  to  certain  preimposed  conditions.  This  is  the  Toronto  sys¬ 
tem  and  constitutes  actual  public  ownership.  It  works  to  the  satis¬ 
faction  of  the  citizens  of  the  busy  Canadian  city,  we  are  told;  and  I, 
for  one,  fail  to  see  the  prints  of  the  red  hand  of  anarchy  anywhere 
upon  it.  Public  ownership,  properly  administered  and  correctly  ap¬ 
plied,  would  not  lead  to  the  improper  influencing  of  elections  by  the 
creation  of  a  standing  army  of  employees;  rather  may  it  be  asserted, 
the  system  would  reach  farther  toward  a  purification  of  politics  than 
any  advance  step  in  the  conduct  of  municipal  affairs  that  could  to-day 
be  suggested. 

THE  DEBAUCHERY  OF  PRESENT  CONDITIONS. 

The  curse  of  American  public  affairs  may  be  found  in  the  pre¬ 
vailing  system  of  so-called  machine  politics,  in  boss  rule,  and  in  the 


8 


attending  improper  influencing  and  debauching  of  public  officials. 
There  are  few  cities  in  the  nation  in  which  the  tongue  of  scandal  has 
not  been  busy  at  times,  if  not  at  all  times,  in  charging  corruption  and 
debauchery  against  the  legislative  branch  of  their  government. 

Nor  do  municipal  executives  go  altogether  scot-free.  Ex¬ 
ecutives  have  been  charged  with  securing  for  their  own  ends, 
their  individual  gain  and  profit,  the  passage  of  ordinances  creating 
franchises  of  all  characters  and  descriptions.  Aldermen  have 
been  charged  with  profiting  by  these  grants.  The  very 
granting  of  public  franchises  opens  wide  the  doors  to  undue  in¬ 
fluence  and  improper  motives.  Aldermen  are  frequently  assailed  as 
being  in  the  market  offering  their  votes  to  the  highest  bidder  when  a 
plum  in  the  shape  of  a  franchise  is  to  be  bartered  away;  even  more, 
they  are  charged  at  times  with  being  unwilling  to  vote  for  any  meas¬ 
ure,  no  matter  how  meritorious  it  may  be,  if,  directly  or  incidentally, 
it  concerns  a  company  operating  under  a  public  franchise — unless  it 
may  be  made  worth  their  while  so  to  vote. 

These  charges  have  been  bandied  about  with  so  much  of  free¬ 
dom,  and  in  many  cases  with  so  firm  a  basis  of  justice,  that  in  the  eyes 
of  the  super-suspicious  the  holding  of  public  office  is  of  itself  almost  a 
badge  of  corruption.  Thus  public  morals  are  being  undermined.  Per¬ 
sonal  honesty  and  private  integrity  will  not  long  survive  general  doubt 
of  the  existence  of  public  and  official  morality.  Individual  honesty  and 
official  integrity  are  closely  correlated;  indeed  the  two  virtues  are 
inseparable.  The  one  is  an  absolute  index  to  the  other.  Public 
morals  weaken  and  finally  fail  when  private  morality  is  at  a  low  ebb; 
private  morals  reflect  with  all  its  shameful  ugliness  debauchery  in 
public  life. 

Party  politics  in  large  cities,  constituted  as  it  is  to-day,  revolves 
largely  about  a  centre  of  corruption.  Officials,  whether  of  high  or 
low  station,  are  the  constant  target  of  temptation.  Read  the  files  of 
the  daily  newspapers.  If  a  tithe  of  the  charges  be  true,  inspectors 
and  other  minor  employes  have  been  lured  from  the  straight  and  nar¬ 
row  path  of  duty;  chiefs  of  bureaus  and  department  heads  have  been 
blind  to  their  public  obligations;  councils,  with  flagrant  and  notorious 
contempt  of  public  opinion,  have  bartered  away  public  rights;  execu- 


tives  have  nodded  when  great  magnates  have  beckoned;  taxing  bodies 
have  ignored  the  law  and  defied  public  opinion  that  corporation  taxes 
might  be  scaled  down  to  a  minimum;  court  bailiffs  have  become  the 
hirelings  of  corporations  in  debauching  trial  by  jury;  judges  have  in¬ 
clined  their  ears  attentively  to  the  voice  of  temptation;  juries,  packed 
for  ulterior  purposes,  or  corrupted  after  impaneling,  have,  false  to 
their  oaths  and  recreant  to  their  duty,  thrown  the  law  and  the  evidence 
to  the  winds. 

All  this  awful  arraignment  of  conditions  as  they  exist  in  many  of 
the  great  municipalities  of  the  land  is  directly  and  inevitably  traceable 
to  the  influence  of  the  beneficiaries  of  public  franchises.  The  picture 
is  not  drawn  for  the  sake  of  misrepresentation  of  facts  nor  to  pander 
to  the  sensational.  The  columns  of  the  daily  press  in  New  York,  in 
Chicago,  in  Philadelphia,  if  hastily  scanned  for  the  past  six  months, 
will  furnish  established  cases  to  prove  the  truth  of  each  charge.  The 
disease  exists;  the  duty  of  the  patriotic  citizen  lies  first  in  finding  the 
remedy  and  then  in  applying  it,  no  matter  how  heroic  it  may  be. 

A  SUCCESSFUL  CRUSADE  AGAINST  BOODLE. 

Chicago  to-day  is  in  a  period  of  revival ;  for  a  generation  or  more 
there  was  indifference  and  resulting  decline.  The  public  slumbered  in 
apathy  and  public  morals  suffered.  Finally  there  came  an  awakening, 
due  in  large  measure  to  a  high  moral  tone  in  the  daily  press,  as  well 
as  to  the  tireless  and  for  a  time  thankless  labors  of  public-spirited 
associations.  All  that  was  needed  was  to  arouse  the  public  from  its 
lethargy.  And  so  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the  people’s  eyes  are  open, 
and  the  first  demand  made  upon  a  city  official  is  that  he  look  to  the 
public  as  his  master  and  not  to  the  managers  of  great  corporations. 
For  the  past  decade  public  opinion  has  waged  a  fierce  and  unrelenting 
warfare  against  what  is  known  as  boodle  in  politics.  For  its  first 
fruits  the  city  has  obtained  an  honest  city  council.  To-day  the  crusade 
is  already  on  for  an  honest  legislature. 

Why  should  such  crusades  be  necessary?  Think  of  the  shame  of 
it !  Chicago,  the  most  progressive  of  American  cities,  the  one  great  city 
which  has  rescued  its  city  council  from  corporation  thraldom  obliged, 
at  the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century,  to  battle  for  honesty  in  the  body 
that  makes  the  laws  of  the  State ! 


10 


Were  public  ownership  of  public  utilities  desirable  on  no  other 
grounds,  in  the  widespread  debauchery  of  public  servants  by  existing 
corporations  could  be  found  good  and  ample  reason  for  the  innova¬ 
tion. 

Theorists  make  much  of  the  argument  that  a  private  company 
can  operate  with  greater  economy  than  would  be  possible  under  a 
system  of  public  ownership.  Theorists  delight  in  the  abstract;  the 
practical  man  likes  to  reduce  a  theory  to  a  concrete  condition.  As  an 
abstract  theory  this  argument  has  a  convincing  sound;  let  us  see  how 
well  it  works  out  in  practice.  Economy  of  operation  means  increase 
of  profit.  Increase  of  profit  may  be  applied  to  betterment  of  service, 
to  reduction  of  price,  to  increase  of  wages,  or  to  enlargement  of  divi¬ 
dends.  The  first  three  applications  might  be  obtained  under  public 
ownership;  the  last  is  the  almost  inevitable  result  under  private  own¬ 
ership. 

For  the  sake  of  getting  at  concrete  facts  let  us  consider  conditions 
as  they  exist  in  the  management  of  street  car  companies.  In  what 
city  of  the  land  are  patrons  provided  with  additional  seats  for  the 
bare  reason  that  the  income  of  the  company  is  on  the  rise?  It  is  a 
well-established  fact  that  standing  room  is  easy  and  cheap;  and  it  is 
an  axiom  in  the  directors’  room  of  a  street  car  company  that  the  fare 
of  each  man  who  hangs  on  a  strap  is,  in  the  language  of  a  poker 
player,  so  much  pure  velvet.  How  often  are  additional  transfers 
given  as  a  voluntary  contribution  of  the  directorate  to  the  public 
which  pays  the  freight?  To  increase  the  number  of  transfer  stations 
means  a  corresponding  reduction  of  profit.  How  often  are  fares  re¬ 
duced  merely  because  a  large  surplus  is  burdening  the  treasury?  The 
street  car  manager,  in  his  zeal  for  the  public  good  and  with  a  charm¬ 
ing  ingenuousness,  tells  how  troublesome  it  is  to  the  public  to  handle 
anything  smaller  than  a  nickel  fare.  Making  change  wastes  the  dear 
public's  time,  and  besides,  pennies  are  such  difficult  coins  to  handle. 
The  pay  of  employes  is  not  increased  to-day  except  when  long  and 
disastrous  strikes  have  destroyed  valuable  property,  cost  many  lives, 
demoralized  the  public  with  a  face-to-face  acquaintance  with  the  evils, 
the  horrors,  the  tragedies  of  a  riot. 

Betterment  of  service,  reduction  of  fare,  increase  of  wages  might 


11 


be  obtained  under  public  control;  under  private  management  new 
stock  is  issued,  false  bond  issues  are  marketed,  barrels  of  water  are 
poured  into  the  securities,  and  dividends  and  interest  money  are  paid 
thereon. 

If  public  management  should  prove  uneconomical  what  would 
be  the  cause;  Lines  would  be  extended  not  merely  for  the  earning  of 
money,  nor  for  the  purpose  of  shutting  out  possible  competition,  but  to 
suit  the  convenience  of  the  public.  There  might  be  lack  of  judgment, 
or  a  too  easy  complacency  in  extending  feeder  lines  into  unproductive 
territory;  such  extravagance  would  be  more  than  made  up  by  the 
miles  and  miles  of  rail  which  could  be  removed  in  almost  any  city 
from  streets  where  the  iron  has  been  laid  for  no  other  purpose  under 
the  heavens  than  to  prevent  some  rival  company  from  obtaining  a 
competing  right-of-way. 

Wages  would  be  a  fair  compensation  for  a  fair  day’s  work,  and 
the  surplus  earnings  would  apply  toward  the  lowering  of  general  tax¬ 
ation,  toward  providing  for  the  necessities  and  the  giving  of  a  few 
luxuries  to  the  people  at  large,  not  as  under  private  ownership,  toward 
swelling  the  bank  accounts  of  already  overrich  stockholders.  Figured 
to  its  ultimate  solution  public  ownership  would  mean  the  profit  of  the 
many  rather  than  the  profit  of  the  few.  Under  it  the  reason  for  the 
watering  of  stocks  would  disappear.  Huge  bulks  of  securities  would 
no  longer  be  saddled  on  an  unsuspecting  public.  A  hard  blow  would 
be  struck  at  the  speculative  world  perhaps,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
any  lasting  disturbance  of  its  nerve  centres  would  ensue,  or  whether 
anything  but  a  permanent  benefit  to  legitimate  business  ventures  would 
be  the  result. 

The  situation  might  be  summed  up  something  after  this  fashion : 
Public  ownership  once  correctly  established  would  be  a  godsend  to  our 
municipalities  in  particular,  as  well  as  to  the  nation  at  large.  As  an 
absolute  prerequisite,  however,  public  ownership  demands  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  stable  civil-service  system,  sufficiently  rigid  to  prove  a 
bar  to  the  introduction  of  political  methods,  sufficiently  elastic  to  per¬ 
mit  the  recognition  of  efficient  service  and  the  giving  of  adequate 
reward. 

In  short,  the  first  effort  of  those  who  believe  in  public  control 


1Z 


should  be  directed  toward  the  establishment  in  every  municipality  of 
a  genuine,  common-sense,  business-like  civil  service  system,  free  from 
the  frills,  the  furbelows,  the  ultra  refinements  of  the  professional  re¬ 
former;  a  service  which  will  make  merit  the  sole  ground  for  original 
appointment  and  merit  the  sole  stepping-stone  to  advancement. 

Without  a  proper  merit  system,  so  firmly  established  as  to  be  a 
guaranty  of  efficient  and  honest  service,  public  ownership  would  be  a 
curse  to  the  community  in  which  it  was  given  trial;  with  such  a  civil 
service  installed  for  a  sufficient  space  of  time  to  weed  out  the  bad  and 
nurture  and  strengthen  the  good  it  would  mean  better  service,  a  cheap¬ 
ening  of  cost  to  the  public,  recognition  of  the  people’s  rights,  a  better¬ 
ment  of  the  condition  of  the  employes.  Last  but  not  least,  it  would 
go  far  toward  securing  for  a  municipality  freedom  from  gang  politics, 
with  its  attendant  evils  of  boss  rule,  boodle  legislation  and  public 
spoliation. 


